When done correctly, content curation benefits you and your readers alike. Content curation can help you grow professionally by keeping you up-to-date with the latest news and developments in your industry. A well-crafted news feed can also deliver vital information on any subject in real-time.
Furthermore, content curation can provide you with free, valuable content to offer your readers, as well as serve as a source of story ideas to feed your editorial calendar. Whether you are a beginner content curator or are looking for tips to improve your efforts, below are 6 steps that will help you become a more efficient content curator.
The 6 Steps
Research
Automate
Review
Schedule
Personalize
Measure
Step 1: Research
Curating content involves research. Content sources can range from news sites and online magazines to blogs and company websites that routinely publish information (in the form of articles, presentations, white papers and even infographics).
To start your research identify any industry publications, blogs or company websites that are aligned with your efforts or target audience. Often, these sources feature content from contributors who have their own publications.
Social media is a great tool for identifying content sources. Subject-matter experts and best-in-class organizations promote their own free content through social media. RSS feeds can also direct you to web content based on keyword searches, and news aggregators like Alltop allow you to sort through the latest headlines by topic from publications around the web.
Once you start identifying which sources to follow, read their content for a week or two and ask yourself the following:
Does the publication provide the right information (i.e., based on your audience’s needs)?
Is the content source credible and reputable?
What is the publication’s tone?
Would you feel comfortable directing others to that source?
If you answered yes to these questions, note them. If not, move on and find additional ones.
Step 2: Automate
Receiving information directly from each source is important, as well as automating the process of sharing curated content. If you’ve identified 50 sources to track, monitoring them individually will be extremely time-consuming. Therefore, finding a tool that enables you to sort through and share content with as few clicks as possible will help you save time — lots of time. This is particularly important when curating content as part of a social media strategy.
Twitter allows you to set up lists, which you can create and view easily via TweetDeck. Tweets from the people and companies you follow are then immediately added to a designated list. Content aggregators like Feedly and Klout take the concept of lists a bit further. These tools enable you to search for and group the publications, blogs and sites you want to follow. As you browse through your lists, you can select content to post directly to a social media account or send the content to a scheduling tool like Buffer or Hootsuite.
Step 3: Review
According to Kevan Lee, writer for Buffer, content curation is the process of reading and selecting large amounts of web content “to find the best, most meaningful bits and presenting these in an organized, valuable way.” Establishing a content curation rhythm goes a long way in helping to sort through curated content.
I review both my Feedly and Twitter lists every morning and at night for roughly 30 minutes. This rhythm works for me given my work. I oversee content development for a living. I’m also glued to my mobile devices at home. Curating content in the mornings and at night are extensions of my daily routines. The point is to find the time of day and frequency for curating content that works best for you.
At a minimum, you might want to review content sources three times per week. This will enable you to get a feel for how much information these sources distribute every week while keeping you updated on the latest trends that might be relevant to you and your readers.
Step 4: Schedule
Once you review your feed(s), you should start scheduling content. I will use my social media content curation efforts as an example.
I use four main tools for aggregating and scheduling social media posts:
Buffer: This is my go-to scheduling tool. Like Hootsuite, Buffer enables you to schedule how often you want to share content, on which days and at what time. The free tool allows you to schedule up to 10 posts in advance.
Feedly: This is my content aggregator. Feedly enables you to track multiple publications, blogs and websites. My Feedly account currently tracks over 1K articles on any given day from more than 30 sources, which I’ve categorized by topic (e.g., Blogging, Social Media, Content Marketing, Grammar, Public Relations, etc.)
Pocket: This is where I save the content I want to share. Once I review an article or blog post on Feedly, I share it with my Pocket account, which keeps a list of all the stories I’ve saved or “pocketed” for future use.
IFTTT: This is the app that pushes the content to Buffer so that it can be scheduled for distribution. IFTTT enables you to create a recipe for pretty much anything. The recipes work based on the concept of “If/Then.” For instance, one of my recipes says: “If any new item added by [username] from Pocket then add to Twitter Buffer [username account].”
The scheduling process takes anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, including Step 5 below.
A final thought: When scheduling, consistency (sticking to a scheduling routine) and moderation (not posting so much it feels like spamming) are essential. Three to four posts per day is about average for Twitter, but might be a bit much for LinkedIn. It all depends on your distribution channel and your audience’s engagement level in that channel.
Step 5: Personalize
Personalization takes content curation to the next level by letting readers know why you’re sharing the amazing content you’ve found. The more you personalize your posts, the more readers will remember you as a source for great content. As you personalize, remember that curation is based on sharing: Always identify the source of your content.
Two of the best content curation newsletters I’ve read are Next Draft and theSkimm. The reason why they are so memorable (in addition to the great content they share) is because of the way writers personalize information through their writing style and tone.
However, the writing style and tone used when personalizing curated content depends on the medium as much as the audience. The tone and writing style I use on Twitter is somewhat different from that of my LinkedIn posts. Below are two examples of curated content distributed via LinkedIn (first image) and Twitter (second image):
Step 6: Measure
Gauging the performance of curated content lets you know your audience’s level of engagement. Twitter, LinkedIn, Buffer, et al., offer free analytics to identify your audience’s engagement level. Twitter even lets users export analytics by date range.
Once you feel comfortable with your data, you can start identifying trends. For instance:
What topics resonate the most?
What kinds of content elicit the highest response rates?
What dates tend to generate the most engagement?
What times of day are best for sharing information based on the channels used?
Who provides the main source of engagement activity — a handful of loyal followers or different individuals)?
Answers to these questions will allow you to identify which curated content is best based on the distribution channel, as well as craft messages that are better targeted to your readers.
In Short
When I first started curating content, I did it the hard way. Everything was manual ─ from visiting the different content sources to sharing the newfound information with my readers to measuring my audience’s level of engagement. Now, content curation is a 6-step process thanks to the myriad of tools that are available (and free of charge to boot!). Below are a handful of articles with additional tips on how to take content curation to the next level.
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